Papercrete And Me

The weather was perfect on Saturday so I started my new project. The building I started in September will serve as a bedroom and the new building will be a kitchen with a claw foot tub in it. It will also have a small area partitioned off for the sawdust toilet.The south wall will be 2 sets of French doors for solar gain so I will probably put a nice table in here and use it as an office. It’s like a great room that is its own building.

At first I had this new building laid out right next to the other one but realized that it would block the afternoon sun and a good portion of the view. So I started looking around for another location.  I am rather limited because I am building right on the edge of a cliff.  I settled on a site about 20 feet from the first building and started the layout. The only potential problem I see is that I am again on the edge of the cliff but this time I am actually going down it a little bit. The first thing to consider is the foundation. Building on a slope complicates things a bit but after many hours of thought I’m pretty sure how I will handle it. More on that later.

To get the best solar orientation I take a board and lay it on the ground. I then pound a stake into the ground and lay a speed square on the board so that the shadow from the stake falls across the board right where the speed square is.

Using a speed square to determine the best solar orientation.

It’s important to do this on a sunny day at about noon time. When the shadow falls across the board in line with the edge of the speed square you will have a true southern orientation. I want my house a little east of south because I want more of the morning sun than the late afternoon sun. I set my first 2 stakes so the string follows the board, then I am ready to lay out the rest of the walls.

Being a mostly visual person, I like to lay out the walls with lumber so I can better see how the building will look.

The nice weather was short lived. Sunday morning found snow falling at a pretty good clip. By the end f the day there were 6 inches on the ground.

Knowing how things are here in New Mexico it won’t last long.

Site chosen, solar orientation determined, corners squared, walls laid out with 2 x 4s.

Next thing to do is dig the trenches for the rubble foundation and get started on that.

And I also have to replenish all my materials. I have about 2 bales of cardboard, no pumice (the plant is closed indefinitely so I will have to find another source), no cement/fly ash (will have to arrange a trip to Farmington) so there is no shortage of things to do.

I will do my best to keep this blog updated with posts of the construction process.

New Mexico weather imposes a break from construction, a good chance to rest the back

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This entry was posted by Judith on Monday, March 15th, 2010 at 1:13 pm and is filed under What Was I Thinking???. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.